“All Quiet On the Western Front” quotes

- Paul: He tells you: "Go out and die!". Oh, but if you'll pardon me, it's easier to say go out and die than it is to do it!
- Student: Coward!
- Paul: And it's easier to say it, than to watch it happen!

Lew Ayres - Paul
Arthur Gardner - Student

“Our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death.”
Lew Ayres - Paul

“I won't be a cripple. I won't live, I tell you... I'll kill myself the first chance I get! I won't live! I won't live!”

William Bakewell - Albert

“- Soldier: Dead. He's dead.
- Kat: Why did you risk your life bringing him in?
- Soldier: But it's Behm, my friend.
- Kat: It's a corpse, no matter whose it is. Now, don't any of you ever do that again.”

Louis Wolheim - Kat

“I heard you in here, reciting that same old stuff. Making more iron men, more young heroes. You still think it's beautiful and sweet to die for your country, don't you?”

Lew Ayres - Paul

“- Tjaden: How do they start a war?
- Albert: Well, one country offends another.
- Tjaden: You mean there's a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?”
Slim Summerville - Tjaden
William Bakewell - Albert

“We live in the trenches out there, we fight, we try not to be killed; and sometimes we are. That's all.”

Lew Ayres - Paul

“There are millions out there dying for their countries, and what good is it?”
Lew Ayres - Paul

“They never taught us really useful like how to light a cigarette in the wind, or make a fire out of wet wood, or bayonet a man in the belly instead of the ribs where it gets jammed.”

William Bakewell - Albert

I'm no good for back there any more, Kat. None of us are. We've been in this too long. The young men thought I was a coward because I told them that we learned that death is stronger than duty to one's country. It's not home back there anymore. All I could think of was: "I'd like to get back and see Kat again". You're all I've got left, Kat.

Lew Ayres - Paul

“When it comes to dying for country, it's better not to die at all.”
Lew Ayres - Paul

“We know how to honor the soldier who goes on in spite of love and death.”
Edwin Maxwell - Herr Bäumer

“War isn't the way it looks back here.”
Lew Ayres - Paul

“Hey, look, new coffins. And they even sent us the stuff to fill them with!”

Edwin Maxwell - Herr Bäumer